Highlights

Q3 2014 statistics from the Monetate Ecommerce Quarterly show that customer conversion rates on mobile devices were only 0.80%, much lower than the 2.78% customer conversion rate for on traditional desktop PCs.

EasyAsk Voice Shopper creates a new paradigm for mobile shopping by allowing customers to have a conversation with a mobile commerce site or app, just like speaking with a sales associate.

Having evolved from over 15 years of natural language research and development, the EasyAsk conversational search engine powers the conversation with the customer, combining an understanding of the shopper’s intent with the deep knowledge of retailer’s products and merchandising objectives to deliver the right products

National Retail Federation, The Big Show, New York, NY, USA – January 12, 2015 –EasyAsk (www.easyask.com), the leading provider of e-commerce search solutions for e-retail, mobile commerce and B2B commerce, today announced EasyAsk Voice Shopper, an intuitive, conversational voice search solution for mobile commerce sites and native apps. EasyAsk Voice Shopper enables customers to interact with a mobile commerce site or app using their voice to find the right products quickly and easily for fast, easy customer conversion.

According to Forrester Research, mobile commerce will surpass $293 billion in sales by 2018, comprising 54% of the total U.S. e-commerce, and surpassing desktop web commerce sales. Yet, the Monetate Ecommerce Quarterly from Q3 2014 showed that customer conversion rates on mobile devices were only 0.80%, much lower than the 2.78% customer conversion rate for on traditional desktop PCs. The limited screen real estate and clumsy thumbpads make it hard for shoppers to interact with mobile commerce sites or apps to find the products they want, hindering customer conversion.

EasyAsk Voice Shopper creates a new paradigm for mobile shopping by allowing customers to have a conversation with a mobile commerce site or app, just like speaking with a sales associate. Having evolved from over 15 years of natural language research and development, the EasyAsk conversational search engine powers the conversation with the customer, combining an understanding of the shopper’s intent with the deep knowledge of retailer’s products and merchandising objectives to deliver the right products.

The EasyAsk Voice Shopper allows customers to ask for products or services using any style – explicit names, categories or sub-categories, virtual categories or product concepts, long-tail searches, and full sentences. The request can have terms or attributes in any order, allowing the customer to freely speak their search in their own words.

Voice refinements which allow a customer to narrow search results with their voice rather than using a touchscreen menu,

The ability to interrogate search results and offer ways to provide better results such as cases where there are no results or few results,

Customized, conversational responses for interactive feedback to the customer and the ability to offer additional product or search options.

A video demonstration of EasyAsk Voice Shopper can be viewed at http://easyask.com/products/mobile/.

EasyAsk Voice Shopper is part of the EasyAsk E-Commerce Search and Merchandising product family, which delivers a harmonious omni-channel (mobile, web, and in-store) customer experience which is optimized for different devices (mobile, tablet and desktop).

“Traditional shopping methods such as navigation or keyword search simply will not be tolerated by consumers on mobile devices, impeding conversion and m-commerce sales,” said Craig Bassin, EasyAsk CEO. “EasyAsk Voice Shopper delivers a new paradigm for mobile shopping by engaging customers in a conversation and helping them find products faster and easier. Retailers will need an interactive voice mobile customer experience such as this to effectively compete in the new mobile commerce world.”

Voice has now become the interaction method of choice on mobile devices. Major mobile and e-commerce leaders such as Apple, Google, Microsoft and Amazon are making voice the centerpiece of the mobile user experience. According to the October, 2014 Google Mobile Voice Study, 85% of adults and 89% of teens now believe voice search to be the future for mobile.

EasyAsk Voice Shopper works on both tablets and mobile smartphones. It supports mobile commerce sites on any mobile device, and mobile commerce apps on iOS and Android devices. EasyAsk Voice Shopper works with built in voice translation services on mobile devices.

Existing EasyAsk customers can extend their existing search services to use the Voice Shopper with no additional effort. Leading e-retailers such as True Value Hardware, The North Face, JJill, Lamps Plus, Anna’s Linens, Boscov’s, Travers Tool, Journey’s and AlphaBroder have mobile optimized m-commerce sites powered by EasyAsk that support voice search today.

About EasyAsk

EasyAsk is the leading provider of e-commerce site search, navigation and merchandising solutions for e-retail, mobile commerce and B2B commerce. EasyAsk products go far beyond traditional site search, allowing customers to ask for products like interacting with a sales associate and getting exactly what they want. EasyAsk Voice Shopper enables e-retailers to support voice shopping, allowing visitors to converse with a mobile commerce site or app by speaking to their mobile device. Customers that use the EasyAsk software see a tremendous boost in online revenue through increased conversion rates, improved customer experience and agile merchandising. Based in Burlington, Massachusetts, with offices in Europe, the EasyAsk solutions are used by leading e-retailers and e-commerce sites such as The North Face, Anna’s Linens, Journey’s, Aramark, JJill, True Value, Andertons Music and Sonic Sense. For further information please visit www.easyask.com.